The bloody truth: Investigating nurse phlebotomy competencies at a private laboratory in Johannesburg, South Africa
Abstract
Background: With the introduction of the phlebotomist technician-certification programme in South Africa, nurses' phlebotomy competence, an acquired skill during basic training, was questioned. Various studies indicate that the majority of errors occur during the collection phase, causing negative outcomes for the patient.
Objective: Despite in-service training, samples were rejected and linked to the nurse phlebotomist's sample collection technique. The purpose of this study was to establish if nurses' phlebotomy techniques could be improved through a workplace-training programme in the attempt to improve the quality of the test results.
Method: The methodology used was a quantitative, experimental, pilot intervention study, based on a one group pre-test - post-test design. Data was collected by means of peer video recordings of the nurses (n = 20) based at outpatient departments of the laboratory. Independent evaluators evaluated the recordings against criterion-based observational checklists.
Results: Compliance to standards on the venepuncture procedure was identified during the pre-test, with an average score of 61.9%. The training programme, developed to address all deviations from the standards, proved to be effective as the post-test compliance score was 85%.
Conclusion: The reason for improving nurses' phlebotomy skills is to ensure accurate results that will assist clinicians caring for their patients. The results suggest that knowledge and skills were acquired, however further investigations are needed for guidance in the standardisation of training programmes and at what intervals should these training programmes be presented.
Keywords: Venepuncture technique, In-service training, Peer-evaluation
The author(s) retain copyright on work published by AOSIS unless specified otherwise.
Licensing and publication rights
Author(s) of work published by AOSIS are required to grant AOSIS the unlimited rights to publish the definitive work in any format, language and medium, for any lawful purpose. AOSIS requires journal authors to publish their work in open access under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.
The authors retain the non-exclusive right to do anything they wish with the published article(s), provided attribution is given to the applicable journal with details of the original publication, as set out in the official citation of the article published in the journal. The retained right specifically includes the right to post the article on the authors’ or their institution’s websites or in institutional repositories.
Previously published work may have been published under a different licence. We advise the community that if they would like to reuse the work to consult the applicable licence at article level.
Note: If you need to comply with your funding body policy, you can apply for the CC BY license after your manuscript is accepted for publication.
